Kitties AND Bears

That's right. We got to hang out with kitties AND bears (take that, Liz). Yes, this post is meant to demonstrate that we have a cooler blog than that of our sister, Liz, and her friend, Barbie. To compare, click here.

We were staying with Katie, Ash, and Kate and their animals while in Driggs. We didn't take a picture with the humans, only the animals.

In true cat fashion, one of the cats did not want to pose for the picture. The dogs, on the other hand, love glam photographs. Higgly, pictured in front, is a national agility champion (he jumps over stuff and gets photos taken of him). Liz's new kitty is around 3 pounds; Pickles, the cat photographed here, is 20 pounds.



This lil' bear probably weighs as much as Pickles the cat. We spotted this cutie while hiking up Table Mountain from Teton Canyon.

Please compare this adorable bear we saw in South Pass City, WY with Liz's bear ottoman. This one is more realistic, and I bet you could still put your feet on it IF YOU DARE!

Canoeing in Idaho

We spent July 4th with Alex and Jared in Jackson and headed over Teton Pass into Idaho the next day. So long, Wyoming! My least favorite state. Idaho should have the Tetons, if you ask me.

Teton Pass was super steep. Luckily we had a bike path on the way up, and then could keep up with traffic on the way down. We broke our speed record at 45 mph.



We then accidentally spent several hours in the Grand Teton Brewery in Victor. They were so awesome- really bike-friendly, with lots of stories of local badass cyclists. Thanks to the bartenders, Emily and Christy, for picking up our tab!



We biked the remaining 9 miles to Driggs (my winter home) on the bike path (much safer and less flooded than the highway), stopping often to pick flowers.



Driggs has had about a week of spring/summer so far. The flowers are amazing and all the snowmelt is causing some serious flooding. We went canoeing down a river/road with Kate. There were "No Trespassing" signs, but we could float right over the fence.

Kate

The next day, we went on a hike up Table Mountain, though we didn't make it very far because we hit snow. At first, we couldn't find the path and wandered through the woods, and on the way back down we saw a bear!





The weekly outdoor music in Victor is the big thing to do in the summer in Teton Valley. More people were there than I saw all winter while living in Driggs.

We finally had to leave Driggs after three days--our lovely hostess had to fly to Seattle! So really, we didn't want to go. We had such a great time baking cookies, grilling Kate's dad's wild game, and eating local ice cream and cheese from the Creamery (all food related, of course).

Bye Tetons! You were nice!

Falling into the Great Basin and Getting Out Again

After leaving the Steamboat hot springs, we decided we weren't quite ready to leave Colorado yet, so we stayed an extra day. We biked all over town--over twenty miles!--to the bike shop, grocery store, and finally Steamboat's most happening bar, Sunpies, by the river. We ate sandwiches and were about to leave when we noticed amongst the 20 plus bicycles in front of the bar, two that looked suspiciously like Tour Divide bikes--lightly packed and very dirty. Looking into the outdoor bar, we spotted the only two people there that could have been racing the Great Divide mountain bike route. We introduced ourselves to Jon and Jackie, who had been at that same bar since the afternoon. I liked the way they raced.

We got about 20 miles out of Steamboat the next day when one of Cate's spokes decided it did not want to travel with us anymore. Thankfully, Cate was able to successfully replace the spoke! We got some help from John, who was biking in the area, to true the wheel.

Truing Cate's wheel in Clark, CO.

We camped that night in the Routt National Forest. The next morning, we exited the forest and were biking through the "impressive" Three Forks Ranch when, sadly, some cows had escaped onto the road. Being the naturally timid creatures that they are, the cows saw two terrifying bicyclists and began a mad, four mile dash down the road in front of us.

Mountain biking cowherding.

Still going, several miles later!

These cows lost all self-control in their fear-addled cow brains. They pooped everywhere--the road, themselves, us--and they pooped vigorously. Finally, thankfully, we got enough speed on a downhill to pass all six sprinting and pooping cows and calves.

Later that day, we hit a paved road and headed uphill for about 10 miles. Soon after turning onto the road, a motorcyclist pulled over to warn us that the road was closed up ahead--he heard that snow had washed out the road in a couple of places. We figured we were turning off before the washouts, and how bad could washouts be for bicycles, anyway? We thanked him and kept riding.

After 9 miles, we hit a sign reading "Road closed 1/2 mile," and for a very obviuos reason. The road was very much destroyed.

Thankfully we could still bike around!

Soon after this, we said goodbye to trees for the next six days, as we entered the Red Desert of southern Wyoming.

Camping by the tallest greenery around--what nice bushes!

After a day through the desert, we arrived in Rawlins, WY, where we stocked up for the next couple of days. We were headed into the Great Basin, a large depression on the Continental Divide. The small amount of surface water in the Great Basin flows neither to the Pacific nor the Atlantic, but rather is absorbed entirely internally. Here we would have limited water and no real grocery store for several hundred miles.

Entering the Great Basin.

Wild horses in the Great Basin.

The first day out of Rawlins, we had 55 miles to the A&M Reservoir--our longest day so far in miles, but an easy ride on flat and mostly paved roads. It was over 90 degrees, and it was magical to see blue water in the desert. We immediately wanted to strip off our clothes and go swimming, but then we noticed two half-naked men down by the lake. Weird! Why weren't they fully naked? Anyways, once we realized they had pants on we went and said hi. Turns out they were Southbound Continental Divide Mountain bike tourists! Woohoo! We camped with Sasha and Jason from Bloomington, Indiana that night. It was nice to hear stories of their trip so far, and it was nice to camp with people even in the middle of nowhere. You can find Sasha's blog here.

Camping by A & M Reservoir.

Sasha and Jason have real bike outfits!

The next day, we had an even longer day--58 miles--to our next water source. The wind picked up steadily during breakfast and we started off with a heavy cross wind. After about 20 miles the wind only got stronger and stronger, and finally our route turned southwest, meaning we had about a 50 mph headwind, with stronger gusts. The noise was deafening, and even the multitudes of pronghorn antelope with big, fuzzy butts couldn't keep us amused for very long.

After about 25 miles, we met three more bike tourists! TJ, Bobby, and Elliot were also riding the route southbound. TJ and Elliot just graduated from a high school in Colorado, and Bobby was their teacher. They mentioned that we caught them at just the right time, as they had been trying out some naked Great Divide riding, and they had just put their clothes back on. We told them we didn't think that was a weird idea at all.

Clothed Great Divide riding.

About 40 miles into our day, averaging 4 miles an hour uphill in the wicked headwind, we stopped for a snack and realized we definitely didn't have enough food for the next three days. What had we been thinking? Grumpy, hungry pandas continued riding, and eventually realized that we were riding high on a treeless plateau, straight into a lightning storm.

In our wind-deafened minds, we at first thought the lightning on the horizon was pretty interesting--cool scenery nicely contrasting the monotonous sagebrush. Pretty quickly our minds realized that the lightning was headed straight for us, very quickly, and we had no cover at all. We rode off the road, down a sandy slope covered in small knots of wildflowers and black, shiny rocks, and had just enough time to jump off our bikes, dig for our rain coats, and crouch in a nearby arroyo before the rain drenched us and the lightning flashed all around us. We sat with our knees to our chests and our heads on our knees, and thought about how dry it had been earlier and how nice that had been.

When we rose up out of our frozen crouches, and limped back over to our bikes, it was already 6:30pm. We hauled our bikes back to the road, and kept riding to Diagnus Well, a patch of wetlands where water flowed from a pipe sticking out of the ground. We didn't get there until 8pm, and we stuffed cold tacos into our mouths and fell asleep before it was properly dark. What a hard day!

20 miles into the next day, we left the desert and crossed over some hills into Atlantic City. This town of two bars and two restaurants seemed accustomed to pathetic bicyclists staggering in and eating a ton of food, so they weren't too alarmed by our dusty faces and hungry stomachs. We were able to buy a few groceries for the next couple days: two cans of soup, graham crackers, and five candy bars each. Embarassing but completely necessary.

Grubstake's pancakes and candy bars literally saved our lives.

Leaving Atlantic City, we rode by Carissa Gold Mine and into South Pass City, a ghost town from the Wyoming Gold Rush.

Carissa Gold Mine--the origin of the Wyoming gold rush.

South Pass City Mercantile.

We camped that night on Pine Creek, in a very beautiful spot with a lot of trees--a huge luxury.

It was so nice, in fact, we couldn't stop taking pictures of it.

The next day, we biked a roller-coaster road following the Wind River Range.

Yay we got out of the desert and didn't starve!

Today a large cowherd blocked the road, and we followed a NOLS truck through the writhing mass of mooing and pooing cows.

I missed cow poo! Thank goodness we're riding through it again!

Cows.

Now we are in Pinedale, WY, and looking forward to taking showers! (Everyone sitting next to us is too.)

Aspen, Trespassing

Cate and I arrived in Aspen just at the start of the Food and Wine Classic--a beautiful event for people with more money to invest in eating and drinking than we have. We arrived, dirty, wet, and snowed-on, and went to a bar where I changed into my new orange long underwear. As I washed my hands in the bathroom, a tipsy woman rushes in, locks herself in her stall, and yells from the stall, "Are you wearing orange PANTS!!!" Giggling, I said yes, and she said, "Oh my god you're totally ROCKING those!" I had to rush out of the bathroom before she saw how dirty I was. Aspen is a fan of my pants.

Cate and I also met a pair of men from the hills of western Virginia, who won an Anheiser-Busch sweepstakes to go to the Food and Wine Classic. They spoke with strong twangs, and said, "We don't drink wine."

We spent Saturday roaming around town, enjoying the ridiculous crowds. We got to test drive a couple pedal-assist bikes, which were SO MUCH FUN! They go 20 miles an hour uphill! If only Cate and I had motors on our bikes. Afterwards, we gravitated to our natural habitat, the Aspen Brewery, where they have a dog and never charge us for all the beer we drink.


Bike shoes (and red pants?) win us discounts at the Aspen Brewery.

On Sunday, we went rafting on The Slaughterhouse, class IV rapids. This was a lot of fun!


Cool booties.

Anyways we finally left Aspen, again, and Cate and I continued on our roundabout route. We followed a bike path for 35 miles, but then got tired and decided to camp on the bike path. This was a strange experience, since the bike path is extremely well-traveled, and it was kind of obvious what we were up to.


Why have such a convenient picnic table if you don't want us to camp here?

Between the ranch manager keeping a close eye on us and the millions of bicyclists going by, we couldn't set up our tent until after 9pm. In the morning, many cyclists were jealous of our pancakes.

The next day we went over Cottonwood Pass to Gypsum, CO--a very beautiful ride up a verdant canyon, though we had to watch out for a missing goose.




Where did it go?

About 10 miles before the top of the pass, the road changed to dirt. Sadly a road crew was enthusiastically watering the road in front of us, and we got VERY muddy.


No we have not showered since then.

Out of Gypsum, we started up a rough, rutted, one lane dirt road over BLM land. After about 5 miles of steep up, the road crossed a private ranch. The owner of this ranch believes that the county road is his private property, and he drove over to us to inform us we were trespassing. He managed to confuse us into thinking that the road had actually gone around his property, and we had missed the turnoff. We almost turned around to go find the road--which did not exist--when he sighed and told us we could continue. "Oh this road does go through?" we asked. We were still confused. Thanks, buddy.

Around 5:30 that evening, we were still biking because the BLM land we thought we could camp on was dry, dusty desert, though it had a great view of the green and beautiful private ranches by the Colorado River. We stopped to fix a flat tire, and one car passed us, stopped, and the driver said, "Do you need a place to camp? You can go right there, I don't mind," and pointed at the lush, treed ranch right in front of us. Thank you ranch man. You are a man of few but important words.


What a beautiful place to camp.

Sadly this man left out the words, "Be careful of the sprinklers that will emerge and drench everything at 4:30 in the morning." These would have been useful words.

The next day, we biked through the Colorado River Canyon for about 25 miles, which was fantastic. Finally we climbed out of the canyon for about 10 miles, and rejoined our route after 11 days of detouring!


Biking next to the Colorado river.

Since we rejoined the route, we have noticed a bunch of Great Divide racers headed in the opposite direction. These riders carry next to nothing, and go about 100 miles a day, following our same route.


We offered a granola bar to this British gentleman, who stopped to chat for a small second, but he couldn't possibly take it. Race rules.

Finally we arrived in Steamboat Springs. We had been looking forward to Steamboat for awhile now, because of the hot springs! So we stopped for dinner in town, and then rode about five miles, climbing over a thousand feet of elevation, to the hot springs. It would be worth it to get to hot springs, we told ourselves! It was worth it, especially after it got dark and we could surreptitiously eat cookies and take our clothes off.


Riding back down to Steamboat in the morning. This is first time we have ridden behind cars that were actually slowing us down.

Getting High in Colorado

Since Cate and I left Salida, we have been adventuring as much as possible. We knew we had some time to spare, and we got it into our heads to climb some of Colorado's famous 14ers. This turned out to be a fantastic idea, both because we went to some beautiful places, but we also met a lot of interesting people. We spent only one day since leaving Salida on our route--we have spent the rest of our time biking to mountains to climb or avoiding closed roads.


We stayed with Linda and Bernie in Salida and had a very nice rest day.

Out of Salida, we spent a day up on a high, hilly, and competely treeless plateau. When we saw trees on some hillsides, we decided to head in that direction to camp. We ended up camping on someone's very sketchy and abandoned ranch, and we hope they didn't mind. Because if they did they would probably shoot us. There was a nice sunset up there!


North of Salida, in abandoned ranch land.

From here, we planned to go to Fairplay, and in the next day or two, climb Quandary Peak. We had heard at we needed snow shoes for the climb, so we planned on biking all the way to Breckenridge, biking back to the mountain and camping, climbing the mountain the next day, and then returning to Breckenridge to return the show shoes. It sounded like a complicated plan, and so when someone mentioned that he was climbing another 14er near Fairplay, we started grilling him about his equipment. We were sitting outside of the grocery store in Fairplay at the time, having finished our ride that day pretty early. Surprised by our interest, the man, Pastor Dan, offered that we could come with him the next day--he had a whole group of people from his church planning on hiking Mount Sherman, and no one was planning on bringing any special equipment. We though this sounded like a great plan, even though it involved us biking 10 extra miles uphill to camp with Pastor Dan near the trailhead that night. After buying some beer to take to the top of Mount Sherman, we hopped back on our bikes!


Biking to the campsite near the trailhead of Mount Sherman.


Early start the next morning--we were at the trailhead before 7am.


The early start meant we didn't need snow shoes--the snow was still frozen enough to walk over.

Up on the ridgeline, with the peak in the background.


Enjoying Dale's Pale Ale at the top of Mount Sherman, elevation 14,036'!


Demonstrating the "diaper technique"--raincoat around the waist, held up by one hand between the legs. For good form, other hand should be in the air for balance. Diaper technique enables superior glissading speed than butt technique or backpack technique.

After we got back down to the trailhead at 1pm, we were pooped and decided not to bike any more that day. The next day we biked about 28 miles over Hoosier Pass to the base of Quandary Peak, so that the next morning, early, we could hike this 14er as well.


At the top of Hoosier Pass, we met Nick Crumpton, who happened to be biking up from the other side and wearing his Princeton shorts. He also happened to be hiking Quandary the next day, and gave us some information about it. What a small world!


Cate and I have camped in some weird places. This strange concrete structure gave us an excellent patio to set up our kitchen, though the hollow tunnel coming out underneath made weird noises in the wind.

We woke up the next morning at 4:30, and after coffee and muffins, we set out on our bikes about a mile to the trailhead. This hike started down in the trees, and by the time we emerged, the brief sunrise had disappeared and it was snowing. As we followed the east ridgeline up, we scampered over the snow in our sneakers like lynxes, and the sun emerged at odd intervals as we hiked above the clouds.


As we emerged from the trees, it started snowing.


But eventually we climbed above the snow up on the ridgeline.


Right before the final ascent on the narrow ridge. The summit was shrouded in clouds.


Last stretch before the summit.


Enjoying Shlitz Tall Boys at the top of Quandary Peak, elevation 14,265'! Photo courtesy of Nick Crumpton, Breckenridge photographer, who we met again at the summit. You can check out his website here. We had to wait about 20 minutes for the clouds to break to take this photo.


On the way down, we almost walked into this mountain goat. He was shaggy and unafraid of people, and we named him Titus.


Me and Titus. Note jacket is in correct diaper technique position.

We summited by about 8:30am, and were back at the trailhead by 11:00. After a nap at our campsite, we rode the 9 miles down to Breckenridge, where we stayed with Kate Brewer, a friend of Linda and Bernie, who we stayed with in Salida. Her house was really nice, and we met her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, who were all very interested in our trip. After dinner at the Brewery and dessert at the house, Cate and I were pooped.


Me and Kate in from of her house.

Sadly we had to leave Breckenridge the next day, because we got the ok to head to Aspen for the weekend! This meant we could detour off of our route even more, and spend even more time in Colorado, so we rode our bikes to Leadville the next day , spending almost 15 miles on a bike super-highway.


Our favorite sign. Cate almost died taking this photo. Note man with strange helmet.

Sadly we had to turn off the bike highway and get onto a real highway with no shoulder. This road brought us over Fremont Pass. A lot of mining activity and clean up was going on, which was very interesting, though there were too many trucks for our taste.


Lakes just shouldn't be this color.


Crazy big mine and lots of trucks at the top of the pass.


In Leadville, Cate's friend Tyler offered us lodging at the Outward Bound base camp. We joined their group dinner for everyone living on base, and didn't join them for body shots, but had a good time anyway. It was nice hanging out with a bunch of people our age!


We spent the next two days after Leadville biking to Aspen. Today we went over Independence Pass--the highest point of our entire trip, except for the bits we hiked.